Friday, April 26, 2013
Sherlock Redux
He's baaaack. But since we last read Doyle we have walked Ratcliffe Highway, travelled all over India, the Galapagos and Africa, the mean streets of Dickens's London, the far-from-peaceful English countryside, and Cloisterham (defies an adjective). Is Holmes the same as we last found him? How and how not?
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Some random assorted thoughts: I am definitely seeing bits and pieces from many things we read this semester. Most obviously "The Sign of Four" cribs from the Moonstone (there is even a character named Ablewhite, for crying out loud). There is a young woman who is supposed to get a stolen Indian treasure and who doesn't and is totally OK about that. This story sets the English "origin" of the treasure story against the background of the rebellion of 1857. What difference does it make that we get this story at the end of the novel instead of the beginning?
ReplyDeleteThere is a also a bit of "Confessions of a Thug," but here we get the confession from a white British man. The "four" of the gang are sort of a mini thug group, although they also seem to be the only people capable of honoring a bargain in the story. Them and strange little Thaddeus Sholto.
Also, I like that we get Sherlock Holmes: author in this book. His texts sound super boring, but interesting in the context of our ongoing question of what these stories would sound like if he were narrating them himself.
Also, in terms of Mary Morstan not getting the treasure: "Sign of the Four" and "The Moonstone" both insist on the cursed histories of these precious items. And yet many English livelihoods and fortunes were being made from involvement in and exploitation of India. Interesting the need to disown that reality in the context of these stories, especially through the person of the virtuous English woman, who is actually so glad not to have the tainted treasure. It is an interesting bit of mass denial.
DeleteI was struck by this denial as well (and found myself thinking that maybe Mary would have liked to be an heiress a bit more than Watson would have wanted), and, with it in mind, I found it interesting that the fates of the "cursed" Indian jewels are so different in The Sign of Four and The Moonstone. The moonstone returns to its native land, and its original religious function, while the treasure is scattered along five miles of the bottom of the Thames. Not only is it allowed to remain in England, it remains at the foundation of the center of London life and commerce. I wouldn't go so far as to suggest that this is Doyle's winking way of acknowledging the connection between English commerce and colonial exploitation, but it is certainly an interesting choice. Perhaps he is more certain than Collins that the relationship to Indian is always there - under the surface, as it were.
DeleteI don't know how many have read The Hound of the Baskervilles, so read no further if you don't want it spoiled.
ReplyDeleteAt first, I was disappointed when Watson went to Baskerville Hall on his own. I suspected I'd be bored with Watson only, and miss Holmes's quick reasoning and decisive action. But having Watson by himself turned out to be a relief, and also a revelation - I realized that Watson is also a detective, and, though not as skilled a detective as Holmes, a more relatable one. He finds things out as we find them out, not only because he's narrating, but also because he is no quicker than we readers are. For those middle chapters of Baskervilles, we do not have that irritating sense we so often have as readers of Holmes stories, that one of the protagonists knows more than we do - rather the mystery remains a mystery for the characters and audience alike. This also heightens the suspense - we don't suspect that the mystery has already been solved by Holmes.
In this way, Baskervilles is maybe the most compellingly structured of all Holmes stories. The late reveal that Holmes is "the Man on the Tor" shortens the irritating period of time during which we know Holmes knows more than we do but we don't know what. I liked figuring out the mystery with Watson only, and maybe that's why later detective stories, like Chandler and Hammet's, present detectives who are smart, but not brilliant and infallible like Holmes. Because I wasn't a step behind a master detective, but with a far more common one, my focus was on the mystery of Baskerville Hall, rather than, What has Holmes figure out that I haven't?
I completely agree with you about Hound - it really seems, more than anything else that we've read, to be the model of the Golden Age detective novel, and it's no coincidence that it's also the one in which we are most dependent on Watson and his observations. Through him we get a good sense of the human aspects of the mystery, which I think are frequently absent from other Holmes stories. We also get to see some of the mystery unfolding in front of us - the crime is not complete and in the past, waiting to be detected, but still at work and dangerous.
DeleteI wanted to step backwards a bit from what previous comments have addressed and look at the opening scene of The Sign of the Four, which I found incredibly striking. That first paragraph opens with a kind of Holmesian eye, noting in detail the evidence of habitual drug abuse; that it is Watson's medical eye rather than Holmes's detecting one is an intriguing reversal for the beginning of this novel. We tend to talk about Holmes as always in control, of himself (notably his appearance) and the case, to the point of sometimes being frustrating or uninteresting - one of the reasons we've suggested that Watson is necessary is because it seems like being in Holmes's mind would be too boring, because we'd just know what the solution was at a glance. It's fascinating to begin this novel seeing him so obviously out of control.
ReplyDeleteIn this context, the way that Holmes and Watson discuss the practice of detection in this scene is especially interesting: Holmes insists that "Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner," and chastises Watson for "attempt[ing] to tinge it with romanticism." However, the language he uses to describe his mental state when is not on a case belies that cold detachment: "'My mind,' he said, 'rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation.'" Detection for Holmes is itself a kind of addiction, exhilarating in spite of his apparent detachment.
More generally (and this may just be the difference between short stories and a novel at work), Holmes seemed to emerge as a much more fully-fleshed character in The Sign of the Four and The Hound of the Baskervilles, as do the people around him.
The idea of Holmes as a fully fleshed character is such a complicated one for me, because it seems like we only ever get him as a individual parts - his long white fingers, his glittering eyes - and his appearance is so changeable, not only through costume but through presentation (as when the bodyguard failed to recognize him out of the boxing ring). It seems like Holmes would like to be thought of as inhuman, above being human, as an "automaton-a calculating machine," as a sort of walking, talking, encyclopedia of knowledge. And yet what do we do with those moments when Holmes is subhuman, animalistic? "his long thin nose only a few inches from the planks and his beady eyes gleaming and deep-set like those of a bird. So swift, silent, and furtive were his movements, like those of a trained bloodhound picking out a scent, that I could not but think what a terrible criminal he would have made had he turned his energy and sagacity against the law" (140). He's such an unstable element; we often talk of Watson as being a mediator between Holmes and the reader, but with Sign of the Four for the first time I saw Watson as essential to understanding Holmes, as humanizing him - keeping him from being too spooky, too wrong, too subversive.
DeleteI find the opening scene as interesting as Alyssa, but perhaps for a different reason: we are seeing Holmes in his lethargic, "out-of-control" state, but...he actually seems pretty in control to me. Yes, he's doing drugs, but as my editions footnote was quick to assure me, cocaine was legal at the time, and it doesn't have any discernible effect on his ability to function as a detective. Of course, this is because detection itself is his true drug and, as Janie points out, the only thing that ever seems to bring him to the brink of his control. Perhaps a straight-up drug addict would be more acceptable.
DeleteWorking on my paper I've done a lot of research on opium during this period and cocaine is usually mentioned along side of it.
DeleteIt's true that cocaine and opium were legal -- they weren't outlawed until the 1960s in the UK. But, cocaine and opium were some of the first drugs regulated by the Pharmacy Act of 1868 (the same year the Moonstone is published). The law required opium and cocaine to be prescribed by licensed pharmacists who kept records and labeled the bottles clearly as poison. Prior to this, opium was available virtually in every corner store and was used to treat essentially any ailment.
In 1821 De Quincey mentioned that huge numbers of people in London were addicted and cotton workers were turning to opium because their low wages made alcohol unaffordable. He also reports that London pharmacists have no idea who is taking opium medicinally and who purchases it to kill themselves. Suicide by opium was apparently a common sensational story and was a factor in the passing of 1868 law (even though it accounted for fewer suicides than hanging).
In the 1850s chemists opium and cocaine were successfully purified which enabled their industrial production which only aided in its medicinal use. In the Moonstone laudanum is used (Collins started taking laudanum in 1860 and his obituary reported we was taking "wineglassfuls nightly," an amount that "would kill an entire ship's crew or an army regiment").
The industrial production of the drugs coincides with the invention of the hypodermic needle and the professionalizing of the medicine. These are also a factor in the drugs' eventual regulation -- injection had to be done by a doctor. De Quincey's Confessions started a debate about doctor's having personal knowledge of the effects of opium and cocaine and as a result Victorian lobbyists for increased regulation claimed as many as a third of all doctors were actually addicts.
To me, what is fascinating is that Holmes takes BOTH cocaine and opium intravenously. This clearly associates him with the scientific community, but he keeps his hypodermic needle in an ornate Moroccan box and he clearly uses it for recreation. I think contemporary readers would have known he was injecting a "poison" and so would have read his actions as deviance. It also gives him a De Quincey-ian kind of subjective knowledge that might be a key to the keen powers of the detective.
As for Holmes' insistence that there are no ill-effects, I read that as mostly hubris. Watson certainly is concerned about the physical effects, and there is more than enough evidence to support opium addiction is real. Cocaine is a different story, though. It's strange that Holmes uses BOTH opium and cocaine since one is a downer and the other an upper, but apparently cocaine was no associated with any effects. Freud published an essay four years before Sign of the Four called "Über Coca" in which he discussed his own use of cocaine and wrote "The feeling of excitement which accompanies stimulus by alcohol is completely lacking; the characteristic urge for immediate activity which alcohol produces is also absent. One senses an increase of self-control and feels more vigorous and more capable of work; on the other hand, if one works, one misses that heightening of the mental powers which alcohol, tea, or coffee induce. One is simply normal, and soon finds it difficult to believe that one is under the influence of any drug at all." If anything, it seems like Holmes takes opium to "check out" when he's bored and cocaine to make him normal again. Self-medicated like this, all until he be over-taken by detective fever (which may heighten his senses like coffee, tea or... I guess alcohol).
As the short stories wore on—and Holmes is killed off and resurrected—Doyle seems to back off the flawed vision of Holmes that we see at the beginning of The Sign of the Four. I’ve always found this something of a disappointment, since I tend to find the staid “BBC” version of Holmes mildly irritating. Holmes is at his unorthodox best in The Sign, and while the novel is not without its serious flaws, I think his eccentricity serves an important function here.
ReplyDeleteThe Sign of the Four is very much an “east meets west” novel. Small’s partnership with Tonga, Roylott’s bizarre menagerie, and Sholto’s slum house cum salon bring the exotic to London. The city seems quite a wild place at times in this novel, from its first descriptions in the opening scene: “See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the dun-colored houses.” Holmes, however, navigates the difficult terrain of London’s urban jungle with ease. He is almost more explorer than professional detective here, especially during moments such as the carriage ride through maze-like streets and the concluding boat chase, both of which show his mastery of London’s difficult terrain.
I see Holmes as a liminal figure here, an orientalist whose familiarity with a very eastern London situates him in a place between east and west. He bridges the worlds represented by Watson and Mary Morstan on the one hand and the shadowy eastern threat on the other. While the resolution of the novel is certainly one that upholds the west’s moral and practical superiority over the east, Holmes’s reaching for the cocaine bottle in the last lines would seem to keep his character in that odd space between worlds.